Stormkeepers
inspired by the Turtles of Alchemy prompt: Touched by the Sun
Trigger Warning: This story contains scenes of violence, death, and references to the Holocaust.
The wind gently brushed Maria’s cheek. She nodded her head.
“Okay,” she whispered.
She cut the thyme she’d come for and braided the stems together. Lifting the bundle to her face, she breathed in its clean, protective scent. The garden glowed beneath the full moon. She knew the luminous light wouldn’t last much longer and hurried back to the house. The winding path curved around the fire pit they had lit days ago. She added more wood, then climbed the hill to the kitchen door.
The Craftsman house had been in her family since their arrival in the country. She could see her sister through the rippled glass of the old kitchen windows. Shoshana glowed in the warm candlelight that filled the room. She was taller and thinner than Maria. Her black hair hung to her waist, tied back with twine and lavender stems. She looked timeless, like the deep yellow dress she wore. Long skirts flowed from her bell-sleeved top. Layers of cotton and lace moved like waves as she crossed the room. Her otherworldly presence flickered like a reflection in water, as two realities overlapped.
Shoshana had the book lying open on the table, an ancient tome. No one actually knew how old it was, only that it had always been in their family. They had inherited it from their grandmother. It had passed from mother to daughter for generations, unless only boys were born.
It came from the old country. Their great-grandmother had survived the famine and the massacres that plagued their village. Saved by fate, she was the only one who made it out alive. Alone, she had crossed the ocean to the New World and then to the shores of the island they lived on now. It was said that the book was the only reason any of them survived at all.
Maria opened the kitchen door. Shoshana held up a finger, warning her not to speak. She passed her the thyme, and Shoshana rubbed it between her palms. The stems softened, and the kitchen was filled with its scent. The book was open to a blank page. Crinkled and worn, the corners curled as Shoshana rubbed the thyme into the center, turning the paper pale green.
While the page absorbed the herb, she poured peppercorns into a pestle and ground them into a fine powder. Without warning, she grabbed Maria’s hand and pricked her finger with a long needle that lay beside the book. She squeezed it, dripping blood into the pepper and mixing it into a paste.
Maria stared out the window while Shoshana worked the paste into the page. She felt the sky begin to bend. The first wave scattered the starlight into phosphorescent streams of green and pink that streaked through the night. The colors twisted as they spiraled toward the city miles away.
Shoshana came to the window and stood beside her. They held hands as another wave of purple and yellow shot through the sky. Maria ran her tongue over her teeth. The taste of metal lingered in her mouth. She glanced at her sister, who met her eyes with a knowing look. They waited.
A wide channel separated their island from the city. Though it lay far across the water, there was no way to avoid the shockwave of thousands of power transformers exploding at once. Static filled the air. Invisible currents of electricity crossed the channel. Violent waves crashed onto the beach, sending spray into the trees. The colors in the sky intensified as the shoreline went dark.
Maria stirred the fire in the kitchen hearth. Together they set a large cauldron of water on the black iron tripod that sat above the embers. When the water boiled, Shoshana dropped rocks of pink salt and what was left of the thyme and pepper into it. They carried the cauldron to the garden fire pit and placed it in the center. They gathered juniper from the trees, rosemary from nearby patches, and wild sage growing between the blades of grass. They added the herbs to the water and kept it boiling deep into the night, sending its essence into the air. Banishing negativity, raising protection and invoking love as a shield.
The aurora became wider and brighter. Wave after wave of colored light arced through the dark. They could hear fear erupting in the cities and towns. When the noise got too loud, they fed the fire.
They knew terror. They carried it in their bloodline, an inheritance from their great-grandmother, her horror as she crawled out from a pit of dead bodies piled on top of her. The grave that held her entire village. And before that, the terror of the women in their line who had come earlier. Healers murdered for their knowledge or their beauty.
Maria and Shoshana had learned to transform that fear. They turned it into power. The power to heal and the power to love. Even those they did not know. Even those driven by hate.
They sat by the fire, drawing the symbols into the ground with sticks. Calling the elemental forces in ways that could only be done with the heart.
Maria felt the storm strengthen. She knew what was coming. She stepped closer to the fire and drew in its power. She called down the moon. She called to the ocean. She called to her ancestors, and to the Sun. The familiar pain tore through her chest. It crushed her breath and bound her to life and love.
Maria collapsed, unconscious. Shoshana dragged her away from the fire. She cut more sage, chewed it and wrapped Maria’s hands in the pulp. She dipped a ladle into the cauldron, and poured the elixir onto the earth in a circle around Maria. Then she stepped inside it too, lifting the long layers of her skirt over her head to cover them both as the sky cracked and solar plasma surged through. It pierced the garden and crossed the channel, igniting the city in yellow and gold. Maria gasped back into the world. Shoshana lifted her into her arms,
“You did it,” she said in a breathless whisper.
“You brought back the sun.”
When the sky let go of the night, the aurora was gone. The air was still but static electricity flashed like fireflies. Maria walked to the edge where the garden met the sand. She looked across the water. Pillars of billowing smoke climbed from the city, but the people would live. She turned her face to the sky and stared into the sun.
“Thank you for saving them,” she said.
Sitting on the beach, Maria marveled at the wide swaths of sand that had turned to glass. Glittering in the dawn, the shoreline had fused to the land.
As the morning light brightened, she saw boats heading for the island. White water churned against their hulls as they cut through the channel. During the night the tribe had moved through the city. Prepared for the storm, they calmed the crowds, checked the districts and steadied the people. Making sure the surge did not turn into extinction.
One boat was ahead of the others. Maria felt him before he hit the shore. He ran the bow onto the beach and headed for the house. He stopped when he saw her.
“You came back,” he said.
Maria tilted her head. She flickered with an otherworldly glow, like the light of the sun.
“Nika, I stayed for you,” she whispered, cupping his face in her hands.
He stepped closer and held her the way he always had.
From the porch Shoshana watched as the other boats made it to shore. Her reflection quivering in the window panes. She smiled, the book cradled in her arms, knowing it would pass to yet another generation.
Over time, Nika and his people guided the cities. Teaching how to shut systems down instead of forcing collapse, how to live in harmony with nature and the universe, how to rebuild without scarring the Earth.
People were never sure what Maria and Shoshana were. They seemed to slip between dimensions. But when they came across from the island, the wind would blow gently, a hush would fall over the water, and the Sun would speak.
That story feels like wind song magic stitched straight into the night’s hem. It’s alive with sisters tending moonlight like a garden flame, weaving herbs and blood and old soul wisdom into a tapestry dense with power and tenderness. I kept imagining fireflies dancing in the static sky and the salt kissed petals of dawn burning gold over glass sand, like something ancient whispering “again.” The way Maria and Shoshana turn fear into warm fierce love still lingers with me, like a hymn you hum long after sunset.
This passage feels suspended between worlds. Beauty carried through devastation. The color, the fabric and the movement. There is something unbearably tender in the way she exists. Absolutely gorgeous Rachel!